S:TAS reviews: Blasts from the Past

We open to a garish utopian image, vegetation spurting up outside a high-tech lab facility. As we move into STAR Labs, we find that Emil Hamilton is the only researcher on staff, and after a barebones, incredulous catalyst—a top professor is foolish enough to tinker with alien technology and release a vicious arthropod monster—Superman chases the beast into Metropolis, on whose dreary sepia uniformity is plastered a pair of busy telephone-wire repairmen, the only visible sign of life in the city. Blasts from the Past is an atmospheric misfire, sacrificing any traceable conception of living, breathing places for humid vacancies and stock backgrounds. This insatiable opening is only the beginning of an extensively hollow forty-four minutes.

If there is any grandiose topic that must be inevitably watered down for the sake of a cartoon series, it is fascism. Jax-Ur and Mala seek to rule Earth with an iron fist, power-hungry inter-galactic terrorists out to domineer a fragile planet. But naturally the writers’ approach is ham-fisted, as only it can be. Among the many disagreeable inferences we are to draw from the first part is that the world is, for the most part, a peaceful place before Mala releases Jax-Ur from his imprisonment. Superman seems without any other obligations for the first fifteen minutes or so, and by the time he is finally ready to do something heroic, he restricts his focus to an alleyway bank robbery. It is as if Superman has no worthwhile ambitions, cleaning up petty crime as befits his Gotham City counterpart. It is only the emerging totalitarian takeover that can disrupt the Earth’s apparent utopia.

Once that takeover does occur, the Daily Planet becomes a microcosm of mass anxiety, and the UN becomes the shopworn symbol of the world’s collectivity. Five minutes at the most are allotted to Jax-Ur’s and Mala’s global usurpation. They have transported Superman to the Phantom Zone in faux-suspenseful plot contrivance, and the ensuing illustration of how the fascist state emerges is a straightforward affair of wreaking havoc followed by mandate signing. Naturally Superman arrives at the last minute to lead the two tyrants on a wild-goose chase and back into the Phantom Zone from whence they came. Given the demonstrative failure of this attempted lambaste of fascism in superhero cartoon form, I find it curious that the producers’ returned to it again and again, more than likely because the story of dictatorial overthrows and suppression of freedom has one of the most deeply embedded prototypes in popular fiction. Thankfully the creators would find ways to morally complicate the topic in Justice League.

All trace of recognizable humanity is stripped from what is largely a story of tireless exposition. Superman only once appears as Clark Kent; his true role is in playing the pundit for world liberty, going from puppy-training Mala to spewing out platitudes about caring for the Earth’s inhabitants. Storyboarding is at an all-time low. Never mind the perpetually robotic facial features and body language of Hamilton and Superman; anytime the directing crew needs to exhibit an emotion (usually anger), they resort to hyperbolic shortcuts, an exaggerated canted frame or a character spreading apart his or her limbs to brash extremes.

That said, I maintain that not one episode of Superman is a total disaster; Blasts from the Past is full of convincingly violent fight scenes; regardless of their stiff animation and awkward physics, the force of the blows is always aptly conveyed and their unfolding often incorporates lengthy stretches of well-defined urban space. The attempted cracking of Superman’s skull constitutes one of the most painful, and by extension memorable, instances of unique sound design in the series so far. Part two is the superior half if only because there is rarely a respite from the action; in such a meandering go-nowhere episode, the show-stopping brawls are usually the most salvageable portions of the story.

Finally, not all of the exposition is dispensable; we do learn a little bit more about Kryptonian mythology, and the Phantom Zone now becomes a key emblem of that mythology, another trophy for the Fortress of Solitude, which is finally named as such by Professor Hamilton.